Braun: 'Doug and I are cool'

Brewers All-Star Ryan Braun addressed his spat with general manager Doug Melvin on Tuesday afternoon after the two met in Melvin’s office at Miller Park. For those who missed it, Braun sparked the “discussion” on Sunday when he questioned the strength of the Brewers’ pitching staff and Melvin responded on Monday by calling Braun’s comments “inappriopriate.”

Braun didn’t take questions from reporters, but here’s what he had to say:

“Doug and I met this afternoon as soon as I got to the ballpark. We had a good discussion. I think both of us now have a clear understanding of where each other is coming from, and it’s derived from being competitive. Everybody wants to win. It’s not going to jeopardize my relationship with him and it’s not going to jeopardize my relationship with the organization. I know they are trying their best to do their jobs. They always have, and always will. This is basically a misunderstanding.

“I feel like my comments were kind of taken out of context a little bit, blown out of proportion. I was a little bit surprised that it became the story that it has. With that being said, I take full responsibility for everything that I say, for all of my actions. At times I’m emotional, I’m passionate, and it’s derived from wanting to win. I definitely take full responsibility for everything.

“That being said, Doug and I are cool. Everything is good. I have no issues with anybody. I apologize if I offended anybody in the organization. That clearly wasn’t my intent. I wasn’t trying to disrespect anybody. I wasn’t trying to call anybody out. It wasn’t a conversation that I initiated; I was basically responding to a question. I try, when I’m dealing with the media, to be honest, and sometimes I’m honest to a fault. It gets me in trouble, and I recognize that. It’s a strength and a weakness that I need to be more aware of at times.

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4 Comments

Alot of people had a issue with both Braun and Melvin talking publicly about this whole thing and yet this reporter is quote “working on a more complete story with comments from the two guys affected by Brauns comments: Bill Castro and seth McClung”. Are you just stupid Adam? Why not just let it rest! People like espn have already blown this thing out of proportion. Let it go this team needs to focus on playing baseball and notthis story Your just adding fuel to the fire by wanting to print more. Do us all a fvor and let it go we’ve heard enough!

Ryan is very passionate about the game. He said what everyone was thinking. Unfortunately, he said it to the press, instead of directly to Doug, where it belonged.

We do need pitching. We knew we were in trouble if our starting 5 struggled or got injured. That’s the roll of the dice we made at the start of the season. There’s no way that Doug is just sitting on his hands. There’s off days, and all-star break coming up. We can go with 4 pitchers for a bit if we need to. Attendance is great. Maybe some of that can help buy a pitcher.

The mistake was Melvins public display…. Braun is supposed to be young and hungry. And the sad fact is that his analysis of our starting rotation is spot on. If Ryan desrved anything, Melvin should have called him aside. Melvins public comments should have been limited to something like “thats just Ryan being Ryan.” After all one of these guys is on th All Star team, and the other traded away Doug Davis and signed Suppan to a four year deal. The guy who deserved credit for the CC deal is now the GM in Seattle…. he provided the talent that made that deal a no-brainer.

Melvin should not have called out Braun, but Braun’s analysis of the series was only half right. I thought in two of four games we hit well enough to win, in game one and game three we scored enough, and hit well enough to win, but our pitching was the downfall. In game two, we pitched really well, big ups to Suppan, and my biggest problem from this series wasn’t that we lost 3 of 4, but it was the obvious and infuriating inconsistency of the strike zone. Where is Bruce Froehming when he is needed. We had another big time bone head last night, i understand we were not clutch at all, but come on he was horribly inconsistent…If you like to give a gracious corner for strikes…do it for both teams…if you like to see the ball in play and favor a tight zone as an ump, do it for both teams…why are they certified if they struggle with consistency? That was the thing I was upset about after the Cub series, not necessarily our pitching, because we made a lot of good pitches right at the knees that were balls and we were forced to give them meat down the middle and with control pitchers who can maybe hit 90 once or twice in a game, thats a big problem…

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